Biden faces the new year stronger than expected in the face of a weakened Trump

A year ago around this time, Joe Biden was a president in low hours.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 December 2022 Tuesday 23:31
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Biden faces the new year stronger than expected in the face of a weakened Trump

A year ago around this time, Joe Biden was a president in low hours. There were not a few in his party who wanted to retire him early. His popularity ratings had continued to decline since the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan; the flagship project of his program, endowed with 1.7 trillion dollars for social spending and against climate change, was stagnant; the same as his plan to control the weapons. And, meanwhile, Donald Trump was making a bold return to the political scene as the increasingly uncontested leader of the Republicans.

Today, in the middle of the legislature, the situation is the opposite. Almost everything has changed in favor of Biden and against Trump. The exception is naturally age: a weighty factor as the president has reached 80 years of age and therefore faces a possible re-election in 2024 at 82, to end the corresponding term at 86.

But even that status as an octogenarian and the longest-serving president in the history of the United States does not place Biden below any other possible candidate of the Democratic Party for the next presidential elections. He said a few weeks ago that at the beginning of the new year he would make the decision whether or not to run after thinking about it and talking with his people, especially his wife, Jill Biden. “Our purpose is to re-introduce ourselves. That has been our intention regardless of the result of these elections, ”he said on November 10, two days after the midterm legislative elections.

The truth is that at that time he had just reaped one of the most politically important achievements with a view to defending his candidacy for re-election: a midterm result that was the best of those obtained in decades by a president in his first term, while having retained control of the Senate and lost that of the Lower House by only nine seats difference: nothing to do with the beatings received by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan in the legislatures in the middle of their first stages in the White House.

Biden's achievement was added to the not inconsiderable approval of laws as important and large as the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs, the Reduction of Inflation, the Chips and Science, and the tightening of arms control measures. . Legislation that, despite being much less ambitious than initially projected, contains substantial advances in public resources, the technology industry, social spending and ecology. And to all this was added at the beginning of December the law for the protection of homosexual marriage, designed to prevent any temptation of the Supreme Court to annul the right to these unions, as suggested by one of the magistrates of its conservative majority, Judge Clarence Thomas. , in an apostille to the ruling against abortion.

Trump, by the way responsible for that majority in the High Court as he was the one who appointed three of the six members that make it up, today boosts Biden's expectations twice. On the one hand, the defeat of the ultras and most prominent candidates whom the former president supported in key positions for the Senate and the state governments placed him and his party –among other adverse elements– in a much worse position than they had been. they enjoyed before the elections in front of the president. On the other hand, and with Trump being for now the only official candidate for the 2024 presidential elections, Biden appears as the only opponent who has proven that he can beat him, which is obviously not unimportant.

The popularity ratings of the current occupant of the oval office are still nothing to write home about, but they are slightly better than they were a year ago. And, after a particularly bad run in the summer that plunged the approval rating below 40%, the gauge is now above at least 43%.

And even inflation, Biden's other great Achilles heel during the first half of the year despite not being especially attributable to his management, has dropped by two points (from 9.1% to 7.1%) since June.

Under these circumstances, and with none of the Democrats cited as possible alternative candidates making moves to run in 2024, it would not be surprising if Biden announced his re-election bid any time after the New Year.

“The president will make that decision shortly after the holidays,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain said a few weeks ago. And he added: "I hope that decision is to do it."

There may be Biden for a while.